Posts Tagged ‘shoplifting’

“Please no shopping into your reusable bags?” Oh, I’ve done that. Didn’t know the term for it. I suppose you’re halfway to being a shoplifter once you start doing that, in the opinion of the (quite large) Whole Foods Security Squadron.

What else, oh, follow the rules or you might get banned from the store for five years, or something.

Read the whole list. I’ve never seen a lengthy ToS like this for a store…

All right, let’s check in with some recent clients of San Francisco-based Singer Associates, Public Relations, Public Affairs.

But first, let’s review some vocab at the Wiki:

“A negative pregnant(sometimes called a pregnant denial) refers to a denial which implies its affirmative opposite by seeming to deny only a qualification of the allegation and not the allegation itself. For example, “I have never consumed cocaine while on duty” might imply that the person making the statement had consumed cocaine on other occasions, and was only denying that they had done so while on duty.”

I suppose this means that Sam is feeding tidbits to the media, as he did with the Tatiana the Tiger Christmas killings at the San Francisco Zoo back in 2007. But the problem is that this time, Sam has a much tougher row to hoe. So far, the statements attributed to him sound exactly like what a defense attorney would say.

“Ryder was convicted of grand theft, shoplifting and vandalism, but was acquitted on the third felony charge, burglary. In December 2002, she was sentenced to three years’ probation, 480 hours of community service, $3,700 in fines, $6,355 in restitution to the Saks Fifth Avenue store, and ordered to attend psychological and drug counseling. After reviewing Ryder’s probation report, Superior Court Judge Elden Fox noted that Ryder served 480 hours of community service and on June 18, 2004, the felonies were reduced to misdemeanors. Ryder remained on probation until December 2005.”

First of all, the arrest was proper, since it’s not the job of responding officers to conduct a mini-trial on the sidewalks of Union Square over whether Mary Hayashi knew she was shoplifting or not. Leaving that aside, let’s work out the timeline.

So, in order for this all to make sense, in order for this tall tale to be wrong but at least internally consistant, it would have to go like this:

1. Hayashi puts the clothes in a bag.

2. Hayashi walks out of the store.

3. Hayashi at some point forms the intention to go back to the store.

4. But, just at after that moment when she formed the intent to return but before she actually began to return, she got busted.

Does that make sense?

(Oh, your spokesman misspoke maybe? How convenient. Hey should the Bill of Rights should be reinterpreted to afford all whose “liberty interests” are threatened not only the Right to Counsel but also the Right to Flackmeister? I mean, why should only the 1% of the accused be able to benefit from the beneficial services of a spokesperson?)

Oh, now about this, from Matier and Rossi Asti Spumante:

“A source tells us that store employees thought Hayashi was acting suspiciously Oct. 24 before she entered a dressing room to try on some clothes. Those suspicions were reinforced when she came out with a Neiman bag in her hand, but not all the merchandise she had carried in, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation. A surveillance camera later filmed Hayashi leaving the store with the bag, at which point security guards detained her.”

I see. So under this scenario, Hayashi:

1. Acted suspiciously, attracting attention to herself from the get-go.

2. Then, she put the clothes in a bag inside a dressing room and then walked out, apparently with fewer articles than when she walked in, reinforcing the original suspicions.

3. And then, due to her talking on a cell-phone or texting or something, she “forgot” to pay for her stuff at the very same time that she was getting a load of attention from store security. Darn the luck!

Isn’t it curious about how Mary Hayashi has done work on the “Asian-American culture of silence surrounding mental illness” and yet, with her own case of mental dysfunction, she offers… silence, keeping the “Asian-American culture of silence” chugging right along. Wouldn’t it be more helpful to explore the subject of why you wanted an obscenely-overpriced pair of useless leather pants so much that you were willing to commit a felony to get them? Are $1000 pairs of leather pants marked up 400% really going to make you happy?

Wouldn’t paying money for therapy be a better idea than paying money for Sam Singer? One choice would get you a professional who would try to help you while the other would get you someone who would try to profit as an enabler. Your pick, MH.

(And hey, speaking of options, what about this, what about going back and buying the exact same set of clothes you got caught with? I mean, you wanted them anyway and, as a bonus, that couldn’t hurt your case, right? And, being a bit blunt here, you have a mental health issue, so why not seek treatment? Why not let that be the upshot of this whole thing? Personally, I don’t think you should worry about being a role model for anybody or any group or anything. But to the extent that you are, what’s wrong with trying to get help and then telling people about it. I don’t think that would be TMI at all. And what if you get convicted of or plead guilty to a misdemeanor? Life goes on, right. You’d get probation (and, be sure to ask your mouthpiece about this, after you’re on probation you can petition the judge to have it end early) and then that would be it. You won’t become a state Senator under this scenario, but most people don’t get that chance and they don’t worry about it. Why stress out over politics? There are other things in Life.)

Really? But all those phone calls to Needless Markup World HQ in Texas, which could have possibly cleared things up, haven’t done the trick yet, have they?

Oh well.

And hey would this incident explain why she ran through five Chiefs of Staff in five years? Take your pick – those firings could relate to the unbelievable I’m-a-zombie-I-didn’t-realize-I-was-shoplifting explanation or the I’m-so-Special-I-don’t-need-to-pay explanation.

“Hayashi spokesman Sam Singer called the [A]ssemblywoman’s** arrest a mistake, saying she had walked out of the store with the items unintentionally and intended to go back.”

Uh, so the arresting officers made a mistake? Are they supposed to hold a mini-trial on the sidewalk to determine the intent of all suspected shoplifters? This seems like a good bust to me. Leave it to the lawyers-types to work out the details later on, right?

“Hayashi is “distraught by this misunderstanding,” Singer said, “and she believes this will be clear up in the near future.’’

Well, distraught, I believe she’s distraught over her getting booked, sure. But how does Sam Singer know what Mary Hayashi was thinking when she walking out of the store or otherwise asportating the booty? And of course this sitch will “clear up” fairly soon, one way or another. Does Mary Hayashi have some exonerating evidence, is that what’s going to exonerate her? Like maybe there’s an evil twin or something? Otherwise, I don’t know why she’s so confident about having this incident cleared up in her favor.

“He added, ‘She apologizes for any misunderstandings.’’’

Wait a second, she’s innocent, but she’s apologizing? Does that make sense? To whom is she apologizing?

Sam Singer OTJ in the 415:

Click to expand

So how does this work, she left wallet in the car or something? Couldn’t she have left the clothes in the store while she was temporarily going outside? Who put the clothes in her bag? Couldn’t every shoplifter in America just say, “Oh, I was going to come back and pay for the stuff later?” Is that a credible defense?

I don’t know, let me interview her, the arresting officers, the NM employees, let me look at the security tapes and any possible prior offenses/arrests, let me get her hooked up to a polygraph machine and then I could tell you with more certainly what I think occurred. But, oh yeah, that’s the cops’ job, in’nt? Why don’t we let them work and then wait and see what they come up with?

Now I tell you, I don’t know why rich ladies shoplift but a lot of them seem to do it. Oh well. (A particularly female kind of transgression, huh? For some reason. Of course, most crime in the world is done by males, right girlfriend? Probably 80% or something.)

Anyway, I’d much prefer the apology / I’m going to get treatment for taking things I don’t need (and could easily afford(?) to pay for anyway approach over the pay-a-PR-guy-$xx,000-to-spin-me-out-this-sitch approach.

“S.F. Zoo gets Martha the tiger to replace Tiger Shot after attacked by 3 Men Christmas 3 years ago”

Uh, en realidad, we don’t actually know that “3 Men” “attacked” that tiger, do we? Hey, what about the minor who died? He was less than 18, right? Oh, and you’re saying he attacked the tiger along with brothers Dhaliwal, you know that for a fact that all three of them did that, huh? You and the zoo have videotape you’ve been sitting on all these years, maybe…

Remember how it was, back in the day, back when Lucky Supermarket (nee Albertsons) introduced the Self-Checkout Machines and they actually worked as designed? Those days are long gone. See for yourself here on the YouTube, where you can espy otherwise-competent Kurenai the Red Ninja getting pwned by an SCO machine.

Before, a shopper could bypass all this fooferallby merely pressing the “Skip Bagging” button. But nowadays that just ensures you get into, “Please Wait for Assistance” mode, where you have to wait for help.

Of course, technology can help us generally, but It’s In The Way You Use It that makes all the difference. When this SCO system is poorly managed or fighting shoplifting to the nth degree, then it can be frustrating to almost all customers. One supposes that earlier on, the system was tuned towards speedy checkout and now is tuned for shoplifting suppression.

What’s the solution?

Going to the regular, old fashioned queue with actual people to ring you up?

Pressing the “I Brought My Own Bag” button?

Placing the scanned item down on the bagging area ASAP with a quickness?

Only buying one thing and then jamming a banknote (you know, folding money, with a value that exceeds the price of your item) into the machine? (This one works for sure, by not giving the system the chance to think.)

Dennis Herrera is a crackerjack attorney, so he and his team aren’t going to make things easy for those trying to make money off of this tragedy. It’s not like San Francisco has a lot of extra sourdough to send down to the counties of Santa Clara and Los Angeles.

Let’s all hope that the new and improved big cat grottos will be less vulnerable to any kind of harassment, even the “boys will be boys” fatal type of harassment.